Celebrity chefs make flights more palatable

Airlines turn to the culinary arts to help gain an edge in the pursuit of passengers.

October 11, 2006|By Beth Kassab, Sentinel Staff Writer

Celebrity chefs and fancy wine lists are being snatched up by aviation executives as the latest airline accessory in the realm of plush leather seats and personal televisions.

As carriers have begun to rebound from the post-9-11 slump, they are clamoring to win loyalty among customers, especially from those passengers willing to pay for premium-class services.

And though airline food is not a meal most travelers look forward to, it has fast become an easy and rapidly changing vehicle for legacy and low-cost carriers alike to set themselves apart.

"Now that they're getting so incredibly competitive, everybody's got to pull a rabbit out of the hat and come up with something," said Michelle Bernstein, the celebrity chef of Food Network fame who has been hired by Delta Air Lines to develop entrees for its new international BusinessElite class.

The airline says her meals -- such as grilled salmon with sauteed Napa cabbage, shiitake mushrooms and a red wine glaze, served with a cauliflower puree -- have been a hit since they debuted in August.

Delta Vice President Joanne Smith said the airline has learned that "great food doesn't cost a lot more, it's really just how it's prepared."

Presentation also counts for something.

Bernstein's creations are served with real flatware (except for plastic knives) on real plates -- the kind that can break -- versus the disposable options that have become so common.

"Dinner was excellent," said one first-class Delta flier of a meal during a trip last March. "The presentation of the meal, the worst I've ever seen. Paper tablemats, paper napkins, plastic silverware (try cutting a steak with plastic utensils), and plastic wine cup. Tacky."

Comments, like that one on Airlinemeals.net, show how important the details can be as airlines struggle to establish themselves as leaders in fine dining after a long stretch of no-frills service.

Delta isn't the first to sign a celebrity chef. British Airways, Qantas, Air Canada and Air New Zealand, among others, have used big kitchen names for years.

Some have toiled to perfect the special science behind successful airline food.

India's largest in-flight catering network, SAJ Flight Services, developed a menu that it says has a "healing touch" and "relieves the occurrence of flatulence, deep-vein thrombosis and other flight-induced discomforts," according to published reports.

Peter Jones, a professor at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom who teaches a course on airline food and its history, said airlines are pushing the notion that "the food on board is as good as you get in top restaurants."

"While this is so, the problem is that consuming food in an aircraft is not the same as on the ground," Jones said. "It is not just low humidity, but also the relatively low air pressure that affects passengers digestion and taste buds."

That means that flavorful food on the ground typically tastes more bland at 30,000 feet.

Bernstein said that for that reason she tasted all of her creations for Delta in the air and used a specially designed airplane oven on the ground to perfect her work.

The recent spate of chef hirings and upgraded service are ways some airlines are "strategically seeking to differentiate their service, whilst others are simply competing on price," Jones said.

The company has found that even tiny bags of pretzels are capable of sparking repeat business. But it has less to do with the pretzels and more to do with the packaging, which has become a canvas for marketing campaigns.

"So the pretzel bag has instructions on how to open it and how to save money on your next flight," AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said.

AirTran also hypes its partnerships with certain companies, such as a deal that allows passengers to test new Coca-Cola products on board -- Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and Coke Zero were both given trial runs on flight attendants' drink carts.

It also promoted the opening of the new Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, where AirTran operates a large hub, by serving Stauffer's whale-shaped cheese crackers with ads for the aquarium on the packaging. That experiment proved that decidedly unsophisticated culinary treats can also get attention.

"I'm amazed at the number of people who e-mail me about where can they find the whale crackers," Graham-Weaver said.